Dim Sum Mum - Tess' Little Pieces

the price of properly placed poopers

since september, earlier even, jasper has been our most reliable child on the toilet. like every other child on the planet, he waits until the verylastsecond to go, but i can count on him to scrape back his chair, and race into the bathroom with the comment, "i need to wee" or "i need to do a poopers". minutes later, hands dripping wet, he will re-appear, and if he has indeed done a poopers, spread his appendages like a pulled over suspect on a los angeles highway, and request a bum wipe.

then it is time for a sweetie. if the hands are still wet the sweetie usually makes vulgar colours all over the hand, which get licked off over time. depending on the sweetie, it could also become sticky. but, i am a mummy who bribes and i must live with these consequences.

the point is, jasper uses the toilet.

and because of his dependability, jasper is going to start school on monday.

big boy school.

imagine.

jathper.

at thcool.

he is very impressed and has started the countdown, although the days are in no way accurate.

me, i am having a minor meltdown of no small proporations. school. i am HUGELY ready for jasper to go to school, especially small world christian kindergarten, but still, jasper. his mind being filled with other opinions and books that i won't know where they came from. friends i won't be too familiar with! i went through all this with sebastian. i felt excluded at times when he would hum a little tune while in the bathtub and for the first time in his life, i couldn't sing the song with him.

will jasper be the same as sebastian?

"what did you do today?"

nothing, mummy.

"who did you play with?

i forget.

how can he possibly forget when i will be gnashing my teeth wanting information? and there is only so much you can harass a teacher. and only so many different ways you can ask the same question.

jasper, starting out, building his own little world.

we're hoping this will be impetus for his sisters to STOP filling their nappies during naptime. they would love to be going to sebastians' school (even though sebastian has told them time and time again of the things they cannot do when they are at small world kindergarten, and he says it in a particularly righteous, knowing voice) and even though they don't poo their knickers, they do poo their nappies...which bothers me...and hopefully this sending jasper off to school will show them that we mean business.

stay tuned for monday. jasper. oh my.

throw baby from the plane?

"not everyone is going to find your son as enchanting as you do".

this statement was calmly spoken to me across the lunchtable. i was seven months pregnant with sebastian, and the author of the sentence is a good friend, with children in their teens. i had asked her for some parenting advice, and she had passed over the typical stuff about treasuring each moment, and came out with this bombshell.

not everyone was going to find my little, $10,000 illegal immigrant completely captivating? the thought seemed impossible, but if my friend said so, i was willing to listen further. i leaned forward, (thus enabling myself to grab another breadstick from the basket), and requested that she share more.

"when your baby becomes a toddler, you will go to a restaurant. and he will pull himself up and be staring at the person at the table behind him. maybe trying to start a conversation. or passing toys, paper, crayons, who knows. some people may find that enchanting, but the majority will be very content to have a small conversation with him, and then are going to expect you to keep him away from them."

although mild protests about it taking a village were swirling around in my head, i did see the sense in the comment. and i was the first to admit (and still am), that although i like kids, and find them fascinating, there are times when i don't want to be interacting with them.

apparntly, 92 percent of the population agrees with me. 92 per cent? that is the number of positive letters that airtran airlines has received since their 22 january forced removal of elly (the princess) and her parents, julie and gerry.

the parents handled the incident the way they thought best, and let's face it, not all of us are at our best when there are glowering observers, all with advice at the ready. but to misquote bon jovi (and who doesn't?) folks like them, who give all the power to a three year old, "give parents a bad name." i have worked my j-lo off trying to get my kids to understand boundaries, the ramifications of choices and all about obeying authority figures. it's not easy, but i do it. because they need to learn, for so many reasons.

apparently julie and gerry, who contacted the press to make them aware of what they considered air tran's horrific and underserving actions, are stunned at the public's support of the airline's action and public comments about how their daughter (who probably is a perfectly nice little girl), deserved to be thrown from the flight for "being such a brat" (cnn's words, not mine).

obviously, julie and gerry were never given the nugget of advice i received, and have never forgotten since that day i first heard it in 2001 ~ not everyone will find your child as enchanting as you do.

falling short of the mark?

i have had a couple of reminders in the past few days that jasper, sela and carys are not your average almost three year olds.

friends of ours just returned from Christmas vacation. we spent some time with them and they had their 2.5 year old son over at our place. the kids were all standing around being kids and suddenly our friend noted, "was our son taller than your kids when we left on holidays?" we said we werent sure.

"'cause look at him now!" said the father. sure enough, their sweet son, who is 8 months younger than our kids, is a good two inches taller than my youngest three.

jasper, sela and carys will be three next month. and i cannot think of them in terms of adjusted age anymore. this is them. we're getting a clearer picture of what the limitations will be. and since several of you have been asking, here is an update.

carys is starting speech therapy soon. she is going to need grommets as well, we think, and a good deal of her speaking problems seem to come (in my professional opinion) from her adenoids or around that area. she still is stiff on one side of her body and she still swings and drags her right side a bit when she runs. she is in about the third percentile for growth and weight. she is being reevaluated for cognitive therapy. her stacking skills are getting better but she still cannot identify a lot of the things the doctor said she should be able to or hold a pen or draw as well as she ought to.

sela is doing well, her language development is good and she is very interested and aware in the world, although her overinflated opinions as to her importance still exist. i don't have a lot of concerns for sela.

jasper, hard to say because what is inability and what is laziness? and sometimes when i should be urging jasper along and helping him to learn them by making him do things himself (ie:putting on his socks_) he takes so long that i just do it for him. i don't think he needs speech therapy, his lisp will go away in time and we don't encourage it. (which is tough because it is very cute). he is also being reevaluated for cognitive therapy, and i will not be surprised if they say he needs extra lessons as well.

the growth thing bothers me a bit, a lot....it bothers me indeed. not that basketball scholarships were part of the plan, and not that i pay a lot of attention to those magazines that state that taller people make more money and get better jobs, etc, the height thing is a reminder to me. they're still behind. they're not normal. they're still preemies.

the dr is saying that they should all take a growth hormone that will give them a couple of inches, but still they're not predicting the girls will be taller than 5'5. and jasper, 5''7. my own little tom cruise. how glib. the hormone will delay puberty, which will cause it's own problems, remember the teen years when the slow developing girls weren't wearing bras and getting teased about it? and then the boy whose voice was the last to crack was getting laughed at or told to sing with the girls in the soprano section (by the teacher!)

and it could be so much worse. you've seen the pictures of them racing about and hear the frustration in my writings...you can tell they are perfectly normal two year olds in many senses of the word.

so why is height one of my shortcomings? 

she said, he said, she said, he said

remember the childhood game chinese whispers?

(probably it has been renamed in canada for political correctness reasons, but as kids we used to call it chinese whispers. you sat around in a circle, one person made up a sentence, whispered it into the next person's ear, and then that person whispered it to the next person, and so on until the last person said the sentence aloud, and it was very different from the original sentence and there is a moral there somewhere.)

my kids seem to have their own version of that game. they have started their own lyrics, and versions of just about everything.

in the great movie (which will probably be remade with jessica simpson soon) THE ARISTOCATS the cats all sing a rousing little tune called, "everybody wants to be a cat". my children have taken it upon themselves, spearheaded by young sebastian, i should add, to re-write the song so it is,

"every party, every party, every party

wants a cake."

and as ding-dong double damned certain as i used to play and replay michael jackson's thriller, the kids sing and re-sing that song. especially when hyper. they really sing it well at that time, particularly when one collapses into giggles and then, broken off from the song, interrupts and says, "no, wait for me, guys!" in an increasingly louder tone as the siblings choose not to.

*******

they also bastardise my words. i say, "jasper, if you do not wash your hands, you are choosing to disobey me and i will discipline you."

and he walks down the hall (jasper rarely runs unless he is coming to collect the m&m's i give him when he does a poopers in the toilet) and says, "cawis! thela! mummy thays that thee ith going to thpank you in the feet if you don't wash your hands."

did i?

and then carys will turn on sela, "sela! mummy going to give you time out if you don't wash hands."

sebastian, who has been playing and yet eavesdropping very carefully, will at this point come and get me. "mummy! none of jay-jay, sela and carys have washed their hands. i think you need to discipline them all." then he will tug at my hands and lead me toward the playroom, "they're in here," he'll add helpfully.

"thank you sebastian" i will say in what i hope is a calm, cool, voice. i can handle it from here. and i move away from him and edge him out of the playroom."oh," he says, all disappointed."well make sure you tell me everything that happened." he's very interested in the dispensation of justice. i think when he grows up he's going to want to marry nancy grace.

they're changing words in sentences, and it gets the original speaker angry, whether it be ME or one of their fellow siblings. it's kind of fun to watch them turn on each other when one of the grammatical errors occurs.

"i didn't say that, naughty! you're naughty!"

"yes you did."

"i'm very cross!"

and then they try to bring in the third party to settle the debate, which works okay if it is sebastian, but if it is another two year old, completely futile. the situation has to be carefully managed from there, because of the rapid discentegration and quick turn to tears that seems to happen in our home.

who said things would get easier once they started talking?

forgive and dance?

forgiveness is a tough one.

three common reasons for forgiveness?

- makes us look good to others

- to stop other people talking about it

- we don't want to spend so much time thinking about the issue

interestingly, forgiving because it is "the right thing to do" does not come up on that list. why should it?

but really forgiving can take a lot of effort. energy, even. loving the person as you did before they hurt you. wanting to get to know them more, even though they initially put you off. not always thinking of the issue when you are together. or even better, feeling a little superior to them because you have forgiven them for hurting you.

forgiveness. i am good at forgiving people who have hurt me, possibly because i have been forgiven so much in my life. however, when people hurt those i love, my forgiveness is not so hasty.

here's what respected author lewis smeades has to say about forgiveness:

when you forgive someone,

you are dancing to the rhythm of the divine heartbeat...

God invented forgiveness as the only way

to keep his romance with the human race alive.

what is so romantic about forgiveness? why do i still have a tough time forgiving those who hurt my loved ones even though i know my loved ones are guilty of the crime they were attacked for? because i am the only one who has the right to make that observation?

tea and sympathy

thanks for your kind messages and emails. we have appreciated them. in asia the mindset tends to be, "they're animals! no different from the cows you eat. get over it." hearing your stories of animals you've loved makes us smile. you get it.

this getting used to not having a cat will not be an overnight situation.

when i was cutting up turkey and thawing turkey stock, i worried about whether olivia would get into the stock and drink it.

when i laid out the floorlength black beaded ball gown i wore to an event last night, i lifted it up immediately, knowing that olivia would soon jump on the bed and ruck up the fabric with her ultra powerful nails.

when i left the house this morning, i wondered if i should turn on the heater, because olivia does like cosiness.

all week long, little thoughts like this.

so how can you manage when someone huge in your life absents from it? if mc and i had broken up (ie: if God hadn't been so good to me), i would have mourned things like never having him hold my finger, instead of my hand, as we walked through a crowd, but i would have been mourning the failure of the relationship, and at some point he would have been a jerk, i would have been a jerk, etc.

but in death, you're not mourning the failure of the relationship, you're mourning it's end.the finality. there is no chance you will be getting back together on this earth. all those things about the person that made up your daily habits and patterns, no longer necessary, but you did it for them, and you think of them while doing them, as you have been doing for them for how many years.

i cannot properly imagine what it is like to lose a child or lover.

losing a loved cat is painful enough.

and she was very loved.

the resilience of the human spirit amazes me.

places in the heart

lots of heart posts lately. i feel like an overzealous hallmark employee swishing around getting ready for 14 feb.

but this past week has been difficult.

1) tuesday we got an email stating that a close relative had been injured in a serious accident. please please readers, as one who got epilepsy as a result of not wearing a helmet, and as one who has a living relative BECAUSE HE WAS WEARING A HELMET...please, WEAR YOUR HELMETS. parents, enforce that rule.

talking to them, charles and i heard phrases like, "wondering if....live or die..."  "worst five minutes of my life" "exhausting trying to balance life and work and hospital". three very true statements and their voices, although brave, attested to the fact they were weary. i'm just so graetful that this loved relative is alive, we're feeling all emotional, not even imagining how the parents are feeling.

but, coming up to three years ago, it was charles and i in that position. and for six weeks, we were wondering if three of our kids were going to get a chance at this world. so that has been lingering with us.

2) jasper went in for a grommet/ear tube operation yesterday. a pretty basic operation and he was definitely charming. but at one point, at around 8am, before the operation, he got a little scared and blurted out that he wanted to call terri and odila. so i let him have his familiarity (he is a social boy) and he left terri a message and spoke with odila. (woke her up, but she didn't mind.) then it was time to head down to the er. after he came out of the operation, he got very sad and homesick. we called lita and sebastian, and as jasper was given the phone he said, "i love you lita and " he started to say, "i want to come home" but burst into tears instead and could only manage noisy squeaks. many hugs, and only doing a poo in the toilet could cheer him up.

a couple charles and i have met because they are living their own nicu hell, came up to deliver a packet of crayons and a colouring book to jasper. i had mentioned he would be having the operation, and she remembered. i can't believe the kindness of people, who amidst their own hell, remember others. that so touched me.

thankfully, today jasper was released. all staff members were charmed to meet jasper and his siblings, who happily trooped to the hospital to hug their brother and exclaim that they loved him.

3) we came home with the intention of picking up the grocery list and heading down to park n shop. we burst into the flat and sebbie exclaimed, "olivia just said how glad she is that jasper is back!"

a nice sentiment, except, olivia hadn't said that at all.

olivia, our cat of 10 years, died this morning, between 9am-10.30am.

olivia.

i have suspected (and voiced to many of you) my fears that olivia was getting sicker. she just wasn't as interested in things as she had been a few months earlier. strings across the floor weren't chased, she didn't meow as loudly, all she wanted to do was lie on our bed, or by the heater, and purr while being patted.

charles and i had a terrible experience when our first cat, xia xia or cee-cee passed away. she was miserable at the vet's. olivia loved the warmth of the heater and given that we found her today on the sofa, infront of the heater, stretched out with her tummy getting maximum warmth, we know she was content when she died. she looked peaceful. we know olivia loved us, particularly charles, very much. we know that in the last few weeks, she had been getting maximum tummy time on our bed.

last night, i was alone in bed (charles spent the night with jasper at the hospital), and olivia was in our room. she was noisier than she had been for months, meowing a few times. she was on the bed, and i cuddled her and petted her, while noticing that she had stopped and was sitting on areas of the floor that she doesn't normally sit on. (she has favourite spaces). we had smooches. and i told her she was a very lovely lady.

this morning i took jasper his breakfast and charles some coffee and orange juice  to the hospital and i told charles that olivia had been meow-ier than she had been in months. maybe our friend jennifer had been right, maybe, at 14 years old, olivia was just sliding into a dignified old age where things like string and licking tiger balm/a535 were no longer of interest to her.

and we came home, and she was dead.

and then it was time to have the talk with sebastian. we went through the, but will she come back alive? and then

but i never said goodbye!

which led to,

will she stay with us?

(she was in the back, wrapped in a blanket and in a tiffany bag...we figured she would appreciate that touch. only the best for our best cat. did you know charles renamed olivia from her original name "olive" because he said a cat as graceful, dark and mysterious as olivia deserved a better name?)

and then we explained we needed to take her to the vet's. and sebastian came out with,

the vet's? is that the animal heaven?

and it was so good to tell him that i believed that olivia was in heaven already. then we had a discussion on what she was doing in heaven, and whether she would get her own private heater, or whether she would share a heater with other cats and make friends. this possibility got him smiling, and i think we handled that part of it okay.

it has just been a very long week.

please - wear your helmets.

how do you mend a broken heart

it's a tough day for sebastian.

annie has left the building, and hong kong.

annie. yes, ringletted, cheerleading, lovely annie, 33.33 % of the sebastian, adam and annie trio.

sebastian has known annie is moving for about one month now, and he figured she was moving from the building, or going on a holiday like a lot of people do at Christmas. guess again, kitten. nope, she's going back to aus.

to give annie a royal send off, saturday night magnificent and i invited annie and adam to spend the night. the evening started with annie jumping into the bath with sebastian and racing around with him in the tub until adam arrived. at which point, everyone in their pajamas they sat down and ate a pizza, shared with asheligh, adam's younger sister and the triplets. and then we set the kids up in the playroom, where the guests selected the evening's viewing: star wars and superman (chris reeve version).

they were very good, and at 8.30pm i brought out the bedding and they happily laid down. every too often someone would get out of bed with the report like,

"tess, adam hurt his elbow"

"tess, sebastian pinched me"

"mummy, annie drank some of my ribena"

"tess, annie choked on some popcorn but she didn't vomit."

and magnificent and i would nod, and look at each other. adam's mum came up for a bit, to hug adam goodnight and during that time the kids sometimes directed their newsflashes to her. and she nodded and we continued talking.

popcorn in bed time, and that was a bit of a hit as well. three bowls so no fights.

then we had the big "we're having pancakes in the morning but you're not" discussion which had to go two against one in every combination and permutation. which involved each kid racing into our room to check they would indeed, be eating pancakes come morning. after child number three came into our room we informed the amigos that unless behaviour improved there would be NO pancakes come the morning.

around 9.15 i realised this three kids one bed wasn't working and got in there and divided them all up. annie volunteered for the sofa, and i separated seb and adam. 15 minutes later the movie was off, annie was sleeping happily and adam and sebbie were whispering contendedly. when they weren't coming to see me, or doing one of their 1,000 wees.

"tess, why do you say poopers instead of poo?"

"i'm not really sure."

"mum, adam is scared but he isn't anymore."

"well, that's good. goodnight, sebastian."

finally it got to the point (at 11pm, i don't think i am being unreasonable here!) where i said to the boys, "you are not listening to me when i tell you to stop talking and go to sleep. so what you are saying is that you want me to call adam's dad and get him to come and get adam? go home? no more sleepover or pancakes in the morning?"

"noooooooooo?"

"well, it is definitely bedtime boys."

five minutes later, mouths were open and they were snoring softly. we sent the parents text messages and we all smiled.

and in the morning, too soon after they fell asleep, they woke up and ate pancakes.

and now, too soon before bouncing into our life with her curls, big blue eyes, and smiles, annie is leaving tonight. i don't know when seb can see her again, but today, as i look into seb's face and know he doesn't fully get it, but he will soon, i am grateful that time takes away the intensity of our feelings.

putting on a good face

i went for a walk today. a good morning for it, the path had been freshly swept and the tai chi people were smiling and greeting me because it had been a few days since we had seen each other. i love my city.

it is 2007, and i am months away from being 37. and having spent a decade in hong kong.

one decade ago i didn't know i would look like this. future wrinkles weren't a concern - noxema was (and is) my only fight against aging , and wasn't too concerned about it how i would look, probably because i have never been a huge believer that i look too good to begin with. i'm not a makeup kind of girl and even if i were, there's no portrait in my attic, i knew i would age, and looking at gran and my mum i knew the years would likely be kind to me, but i didn't know where the lines would fall. or how many inches the boobs would. the lines, they're okay. very deep when smiling. the ones around my eyes show that i have seen alot, and focused on things far away, and close to me. smiled and scowled at them.

words on a page. in the 32 years i have been reading, i have spent countless hours with typewritten characters brought to life by clever writers. i have also spent hours idly leaving suntan oil fingerprints on pages of pulpy novels as i sat sitting on white beaches smiling as charles beside me built a boat, mcgyver like, out of sticks, straws, pieces of bathing suit, gum and twine. cheering and chastising the characters has given my face lines.

i have seen things from a distance. mount everest. watching govenor Chris Patten leave his house for the last time on june 30, 1997, nepalese royalty one week before their assassination, dolphins, whales, famous celebrities, loved ones approaching and leaving, me. squinting at them all. trying to imprint it forever.

i have seen some things up close. emotions on strangers and loved ones faces. i held sebastian when he was seconds old, i watched jasper's eyes open for the first time, i saw carys equate me with security, and relax as i touched her face. i saw sela instinctively root towards my chest the first time i ever held her. i have seen love up close. and other things. courage at funerals where people are so brave you clench your mouth and squeeze your eyes for them. i have seen pain in friends eyes and heard it in their voices i find my mouth pursed and my eyes wet, my words useless, my arms the only consolation.

i never knew 37 years would be like this. i never knew it would be this good. that life would be so tough, so challenging, but so rewarding.  the lines don't share enough. i am so glad the 27 year old came and stayed. gave hong kong and love a chance.

keep or return the gift?

christmas is the one time of year where magnificent charles and i really evaluate our living in asia. actually, it is only i that really do. magchar is convinced this is the best place for him professionally and for the family. given that i don't drive, where else could we live and survive? not very likely north america indeed.

living in hong kong is an incredible gift for us. and i would like to think we cherish it. today we went for a long walk along the reservoir, and halfway up to the peak, and when the kids weren't nearly tumbling down the hill or into the water, they were exclaiming over the old cement structures from world war two (santa claus lives here) or the leafy plants and turtles.

but still, it is difficult at times to be so far away. i would like my kids to have a snowy Christmas, surrounded by kin.

and am i idealistic to think they would have a better idea of what it means to be Canadian if they were actually living in Canada? or would they just have a better idea of what Canada looks like? but then, as many people point out to me, my kids see more of canada than a lot of canadians do. they've been to the northwest territories, seen several places in ontario, alberta and british columbia. not bad.

but still, the heart wants what the heart wants, and this time of year, i want family.

we called charles' family the other day as the kids were screaming over the presents that they had received from charles' sister and i was screaming over the books the kids and i had received from charles' dad. the girls received dolls (promptly and pragmatically named pink and blue) and i wanted the rellies to hear the excitement and joy. but of course, time zone differences...they were in a rush, but still charles managed to speak with most people and then boom, it was over. and then we couldn't call back because of the phone lines being down the next few days because of the earthquake. knowing they were all together, we wanted to be there also. but we've made our beds, and living away from home, this is part of the price we pay.

but could it be any other way? could we survive in canada?

of course. you suck it up. but what is to say we would even be in toronto if we did move back? if we were based in vancouver we would probably be able to visit toronto even less of the time, given the appaling cost of flying cross country.

this malaise of the heart will go away in a couple of days, it usually does. but for now, i'm wistful.

(and i will say being without internet for five days was certainly an odd experience! WOW).